第69章 BEFORE THE TRIAL.LENT,(1)

We have not,however,sufficiently described the horror of the prison,and the treatment to which Jeanne was exposed,though the picture is already dark enough.It throws a horrible yet also a grotesque light upon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in which she was confined,had secret provision for an /espionnage/of the most base kind,openings made in the walls through which everything that took place in the room,every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner,could be spied upon and every word heard.The idea of such a secret watch has always been attractive to the vulgar mind,and no doubt it has been believed to exist many times when there was little or no justification for such an infernal thought.From the "ear"of Dionysius,down to the /Trou Judas/,which early tourists on the Continent were taught to fear in every chamber door,the idea has descended to our own times.It would seem,however,to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiring information was in full operation during the trial of Jeanne,and various spies were permitted to peep at her,and to watch for any unadvised word she might say in her most private moments.We are told that the Duke of Bedford made use of the opportunity in a still more revolting way,and was present,a secret spectator,at the fantastic scene when Jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examined her person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations which were made about her.The imagination,however,refuses to conceive that a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself to the level of a Peeping Tom in this way;all the French historians,nevertheless,repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence.And they also relate,with more apparent truth,how a double treachery was committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing two secretaries at these openings,to take down her conversation with a spy who had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own;and that not only Cauchon but Warwick also was present on this occasion,listening,while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside.The clerks,we are glad to say,are credited with a refusal to act:but Warwick did not shrink from the ignominy.The Englishmen indeed shrank from no ignominy;nor did the great French savants assembled under the presidency of the Bishop.It is necessary to grant to begin with that they were neither ignorant nor base men,yet from the beginning of the trial almost every step taken by them appears base,as well as marked,in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning,by the profoundest ignorance of human nature.The spy of whom we have spoken,L'Oyseleur (bird-snarer,a significant name),was sent,and consented to be sent,to Jeanne in her prison,as a fellow prisoner,a /pays/,like herself from Lorraine,to invite her confidence:but his long conversations with the Maid,which were heard behind their backs by the secretaries,elicited nothing from her that she did not say in the public examination.She had no secret devices to betray to a traitor.

She would not seem,indeed,to have suspected the man at all,not even when she saw him among her judges taking part against her.Jeanne herself suspected no falsehood,but made her confession to him,when she found that he was a priest,and trusted him fully.The bewildering and confusing fact,turning all the contrivances of her judges into foolishness,was,that she had nothing to confess that she was not ready to tell in the eye of day.

The adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from the candid soul which had none,was justified,it appears,by the manner of her trial,which was after the rules of the Inquisition--by which even more than by those which regulate an ordinary French trial the guilt of the accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought,not a fair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice.The first thing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictment against Jeanne;was she to be tried for magical arts,for sorcery and witchcraft?It is very probable that the mission of L'Oyseleur was to obtain evidence that would clear up this question by means of recalling to her the stories of her childhood,of the enchanted tree,and the Fairies'Well;from which sources,her accusers anxiously hoped to prove that she derived her inspiration.

But it is very clear that no such evidence was forthcoming,and that it seemed to them hopeless to attribute sorcery to her;therefore the accusation was changed to that of heresy alone.The following mandate from the University authorising her prosecution will show what the charge was;and the reader will note that one of its darkest items is the costume,which for so many good and sufficient reasons she wore.

Here is the official description of the accused: